How to Create a Smeared Ketchup Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

In this tutorial, we will use a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create a realistic-looking ketchup text effect. We will also show how to smear or smudge the ketchup effect in an optional step at the end. Let's get started!

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial. Please download them before you begin. If they are not available, please find alternatives.

1. Prepare the Text

Step 1

First, we are going to need the text. If you're good at hand-lettering, you can simply draw the text that you want. If not, open up Illustrator, create a new file, add text using Type Tool (T). For this tutorial, I used a script font.

Step 2

Use the Pen Tool (P) to manually draw text based on the actual font type. It won't be as clean as the real one. But that is OK because we want it to be as realistic as possible.

Step 3

Add line under the type. Keep it as realistic as possible.

Step 4

Select the path and then hit Control-C to copy it.

Step 5

Open up Photoshop. Make new file (Control-N) with the size 2254 px by 964 px.

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Make a new layer underneath the tomato. Activate the Brush Tool and set foreground color to black. Paint a soft shadow using big soft brush.

Step 7

Paint orange #ce786d on top of the shadow. This will be reflection of the tomato onto its base.

Step 8

Add bigger shadow with black and orange #ce786d as its color.

Here's what we have so far.

4. Smear the Effect

Step 1

Our text is too clean. We want to make it more realistic by adding a smear onto one of the characters. Start by making random shapes covering one of the characters. Here, we use "p". Apply Layer Style that we used earlier on the original text.

Step 2

Step 3

Paint some part of the shapes with black to hide them. Make sure you paint random areas to give it realistic effect.

Step 4

Draw random selection using Polygonal Lasso Tool and then fill it with orange color #b5621e. Erase some parts of it using big soft Eraser Tool. Paint a bit of brown #973b1d to add realistic color.

Step 5

Set foreground color to orange #ecb877. Activate the Brush Tool and reduce its Opacity from the Option Bar. Paint some random lines across the character and random shape we made earlier.

Step 6

Continue drawing more lines. This time use the darker color #f46d15. Make sure you are still using the low opacity Brush.

Step 7

Paint shadow and highlights onto the smear using the colors #f2872f and #d25945. Feel free to experiment with other color.

Step 8

And this is the result we have.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, I showed you how to use some of Photoshop's basic tools to create a ketchup text effect. I hope that you learned something from this tutorial and can use the techniques that I showed to create an exciting text effect of your own.